


Ain’t Ever Gonna Part

by ellispark



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brief mentions of past prostitution, F/M, M/M, Mixtapes everywhere, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15926054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellispark/pseuds/ellispark
Summary: Dean has loved a few people in his lifetime. He intends for Cas to be the last.





	Ain’t Ever Gonna Part

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Voib](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voib/gifts).



> Song prompt: “Good Times Bad Times” by Led Zeppelin

Giving Cas the damn mixtape turns out to be more nerve-wracking than Dean anticipated.

He realizes, of course, that Cas doesn’t understand the implications of a mixtape. He doesn’t know how long it takes to work out the perfect playlist — the endless hours of humming and whisper-singing lyrics and jotting down an order to the track list only to erase it. Cas doesn’t know about painstakingly pressing the recording button at just the right time and wincing when you’re off a second or two. He doesn’t know about searching the song lyrics and your damn heart for hidden meanings and trying to determine how much you’re really willing to put out there. 

Cas doesn’t seem to notice the sheen of sweat on Dean’s forehead when Dean shoves the tape into his waiting hand, saying, “For your musical education.”

His musical education. _Yeah, right._

Cas says, “Thank you, Dean,” with a small smile. As he walks away, Dean remembers he forgot to check if Cas’s new truck even has a fucking tape deck.

 

///

 _Sixteen I fell in love_  
_With a girl as sweet as could be_  
_Only took a couple of days_ _  
Till she was rid of me_

Dean knows all about the implications of mixtapes, especially those composed entirely of Led Zeppelin songs, which mostly deal in _Lord of the Rings_ and sex imagery, sometimes mixing the two in a way only Robert Plant could get away with. See, Dean gave out plenty of mixtapes back in the day — to Amanda Heckerling, Rhonda Hurley, Bonnie Lewis, Maria Alvarez, and a spate of other girls whose pants he was desperate to get into during high school.

Those mixtapes were born out of teenage hormones, though. The first time he gave away a mixtape with a romantic intent, it was to Robin.

He begged Sonny to take him into town to hunt down a blank tape, and, because he didn’t have a personal radio, he sat in the kitchen for hours waiting for the right song to play on Sonny’s. Sure, Zepp ended up on it — Dean jumped out of his chair when “Dancing Days” came on the local rock station — but also some ‘95 top hits shit Dean would never publicly admit to knowing, like “I’ll Be There for You” and “Wonderwall.”

His hands shook when he gave Robin her tape, and they kept shaking when she kissed him on the cheek. She didn’t ask what songs he included, and he doesn’t know if she ever listened to it. Two days later, Dad came to pick him up from Sonny’s, and that was that. The most normal period of Dean’s life, cut short by the sound of the Impala’s idling engine.

Young love is an odd thing — and that’s what it was. It was love — consuming, heart-pounding, pure — and it was also young — fleeting, naive, inexperienced. Dean remembers walking away from Robin feeling like a knife to the gut — but then he took an actual knife to the upper thigh on a ghost hunt three weeks later, and physical anguish trumped emotional pain. He forgot about Robin, or at least forgot to think about her, around six months later when he lost his virginity to a girl whose name he can’t recall.

At sixteen Dean already knew it was safest to only love family. Family wasn’t allowed to leave you, and you weren’t allowed to leave them.

 

///

“Have you listened to that tape yet?” Dean asks Cas one morning while he’s frying eggs for breakfast. If he’s bouncing on his toes a little, well, he can’t help it. It’s been a good day so far — Sam remembered to pick up the groceries for once, Seger is playing on the radio, and Cas is in the bunker. Dean’s always in a better mood when Cas is around.

“I don’t have anywhere to play it,” Cas says, glancing over Dean’s shoulder to watch him push the eggs around the skillet. “My Continental had a slot for tapes, but the truck—”

“No big deal,” Dean says, even though it is, to him, the Biggest Deal. “I have an old Walkman somewhere you can borrow.”

He spends the next five minutes explaining to Cas what a Walkman is while he cooks the eggs. Sam comes in at the tail end of the conversation, smiles an indecipherable smile in their direction, and sits down at the table, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Why are you trying to teach him about Walkmans? They’re completely obsolete now, Cas. I’ll get you an iPod if you want a portable music player.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Cas says in that solemn, serious way of his, “but Dean gave me a mixtape to listen to, so I believe the Walkman will work best.”

Sam’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline, and Dean ducks his head, focusing on the stove to avoid the face Sam is making at him. Cas may not understand the significance of a mixtape, but Sam sure as hell does.

“Could I borrow it now?” Cas asks, oblivious to the skyrocketing tension in the room. “I’m about to head out.”

The words fall like a guillotine, severing that tension and spilling out Dean’s blood-red, disappointed anger in a rush.

“You just got here.” He looks up from the stove at Cas, voice low and eyes hard. “Now you’re off again?” Dean sees Sam shifting in his chair, and he remembers he’s already revealed too much this morning. “I mean—” _Would it kill you to stay and act like you want to be around me?_ “—we haven’t even had breakfast yet, man.”

“Dean,” Cas says uneasily, “I don’t need to eat.”

“Yeah, but you could sit down and talk to us. You know, like we’re your friends.”

“It’s imperative we find Kelly before the child is born,” Cas says, irritation clear in his voice and the hard set of his shoulders. “You know this. We’ve discussed it a dozen times.”

“Then wait an hour or two, and Sam and I will go with you!”

“I have angelic contacts who won’t speak with me if you’re there, Dean. It’s easiest for me to go alone.”

“Guys!” By the time Sam speaks up, Cas and Dean are glaring at each other, Walkman forgotten. “Listen — Cas, if you’ve gotta go, just keep us updated, okay? No forgetting to text for weeks, please.”

“Fine.” Cas drags his eyes away from Dean to respond to Sam. “I’ll be in touch.” Then he sweeps out of the kitchen with a light _whoosh_ of his trench coat, footsteps heavy and angry as he makes his way out of the bunker. Dean slams the spatula down on the counter and leaves the eggs to burn, stomping to his own room and slamming the door behind him.

 

///

  _She swore that she would be all mine_  
_And love me till the end_  
_When I whispered in her ear_  
_I lost another friend_

Dean never made a mixtape for Cassie.

It’s not that he didn’t want to — he planned one out, structured the bare bones of a rockin’ mix while driving back roads and thinking about the press of her lips on his bare shoulder, the way she shuddered his name during climax — it’s that they didn’t last long enough for him to make it.

They were together for a month. It might as well have been a year in Dean’s eyes. Sleeping in her bed almost every night, scrounging up real work as a bartender, getting to know her friggin’ neighbors — it was an almost dreamlike reprieve from his previous life of motel rooms, monsters, and one-night stands.

But a month isn’t a long time for normal people, so when Dean said, “I have two important things to tell you” and those two things were “I love you, too, but you need to know monsters are real,” Cassie told him to get out of her apartment and never come back, “Damn you, Dean Winchester!”

He tore up the list he made of the songs he wanted to include on her tape, and he tossed the little pieces of paper out of the window as he drove out of town.

 

 ///

“He doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

Dean tries to ignore Sam, focusing on throwing his clothes into his duffel. Sam calls it “anger-packing.” He’s more right than Dean would care to admit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dean does know what Sam’s talking about, because Cas just snuck off, _again_ , and he took the Colt with him this time. The edges of Dean's ears burn as he thinks of how intimate he made the whole sordid affair sound, telling Sam “He came into my room and he played me.” He wishes Cas never told Sam about the damn tape. Dean wishes he never told his brother, “And he tried to give me his mixtape back as a fucking diversion!”

“Dean.” Sam stands in his bedroom doorway, fiddling with his bag straps. He’s already packed and ready to go chase after Cas. “Do you really think an angel who didn’t know what porn was would understand the connotations of a mixtape?”

Dean throws the last of his underwear in his bag and yanks viciously on the zipper. He watches the dot symbolizing Cas on the tracker on his phone and thinks _this would be so much easier if you weren’t in love with him._

“Let’s roll,” he says, pushing past Sam and heading for the door.

 

 ///

 _When my woman left home_  
_With a brown eyed man_  
_Well, I still don't seem to care_

He never meant for Lisa to be anything more than another sweaty, enjoyable night in a cheap motel room.

Dean was in the midst of a major tailspin when they first met — a month removed from the disastrous break-up with Cassie, three months removed from his last real phone call with his father, two years removed from any contact with Sam. Even when John would send him a message, it was brief — “Hunt in Cheyenne,” “Look up how to kill a wraith,” “Meet me in three weeks in Tallahassee.” Dean would listen to those voicemails and wonder, _is this all I’m living for?_ Another hunt, another blood covered flannel, another drink at another shitty bar, another endless highway with no one beside him in the passenger seat. _I am going to be alone forever_ was his mantra in those days. 

Lisa was always good at saving his life.

The first night, the should-have-been-only-night, they danced on the bar at a place called Skeeter’s, then broke into a closed diner so he could give her a taste of the best pie in the state. When they finally made it into bed, she was absolutely, _by far_ , the best lover Dean had ever had. She made him forget he wasn’t really looking forward to the rest of his life. Leaving her behind hurt a lot more than it should have.

Finding her and getting together again hurt, too — but that may have been a byproduct of his misery over losing Sam and being abandoned by Cas.

Dean made her a CD, as repulsive as he found the idea, because she didn’t have a tape player and he wasn’t about to pull the tarp off the Impala with Sam still rotting in the Cage. It was mostly Led Zeppelin — no one ever accused him of being too creative — with some Seger and Billy Squier thrown in. Lisa liked to play it while she cleaned, dancing suggestively to “Night Moves” with a broom until Ben walked into the room. She and Dean would burst into tears of laughter at his oblivious, “What? What are you guys laughing at?”

Lisa gave the CD back to Dean in a box with all the clothes and books he’d left behind at her place. She dumped that shit on him the same day she told him he needed to stay gone for good. She was dressed up for her date with some doctor, high heels and black dress, and Dean knew, no matter how much he may have wanted to, he could never choose her over Sam. Even the sharp burn of jealousy and the dull ache of loss couldn’t change that.

 

 ///

Dean finds Cas standing outside of the cabin, watching the sun set over the lake. Mary and Sam and Kelly are inside, waiting for the baby to come, and all Dean cares about is figuring out what the fuck is going on with Cas.

He stands next to Cas and rechecks the ammunition in his gun just to have something to do with his hands.

“So,” Dean says once the silence feels unbearable, “you gonna tell me why we’re doing all this for baby Damien? When did this change from ‘We have to kill him’ to 'He has to be born with all his powers?’”

Cas’s eyes flick toward him, unamused.

“I saw the future, Dean. He saves us. All of us.”

Dean shoves his gun into the back of his jeans and grabs Cas’s shoulder. _Look me in the eye_ , he thinks, and Cas does. There are some things about them that have never changed, and one of those things is Dean can bring Cas back from the edge with a touch.

“Cas, you don’t know what the future is gonna be like. Nobody does. Hell, he might be showing you rainbows and butterflies just to get you on his side, but really he wants pain and destruction. Just like the rest of them.”

“The rest of who, Dean?” The question is pointed.

“The angels, Cas.” There’s no point in sugar-coating this, not when the final hour is at hand. Again. “That’s kind of their thing, remember? And he’s part-Lucifer. We can’t just ignore that.”

Cas has the nerve to do that full-body eye roll, the one where he can't fit his condescension in his eyes.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Cas says testily, “and you should not forget he’s an innocent child. He’s done nothing wrong.”

And to think, before this conversation started Dean thought he might actually say, _You hurt me when you took off with the Colt. You hurt me when you tried to give back the tape. You hurt me when you chose this kid over me. You hurt me, and I love you, and it hurts._

No way in hell is he saying any of that now.

“Yet,” Dean snaps. “He hasn’t done anything wrong _yet_.” And he turns on his heel and heads back to the cabin. They'll fix their crap later. They always do.

 

 ///

  _I know what it means to be alone_  
_I sure do wish I was at home_

Dean started sleeping with men in his late teens. It was a once-in-a-blue moon type of thing — quick fucks behind bars and in bathroom stalls, usually for money. He had to keep Sam fed somehow, right? When teenage boys hit puberty, there’s no estimating the true capacity of their limitless stomachs. Dean went without when he was a teenager. He wanted to make sure Sam never had to.

There were a few johns who stood out — the trucker who wanted to blow him in return, the closeted gay man who cried when Dean let him fuck him between two dumpsters at a rest stop. Dean never loved any of them, never even liked them, and he never associated any songs with them.

He shouldn’t have slept with Deacon. Deacon was Dad’s friend, another ex-Marine who’d witnessed the destruction of the supernatural world firsthand. Deacon was older. Deacon was the kind of guy who came on straight, except for the glint in his eyes when he looked at Dean. Whenever Dad would work a case near the Green River County Detention Center, Dean knew he could count on three things from Deacon — a warm dinner, a comfortable bed to sleep in, and an appraising, hungry gaze.

So when Dad started sending Dean on his own hunts and Sam ditched them both for Stanford, Dean figured he could be a little less discreet when it came to picking up men. He was lonely; he was tired. He wanted something familiar. For whatever reason, he went to Deacon first.

“Dad’s not here,” he said when Deacon opened the door to his small apartment. “Do you want to—” That was all he had to say.

He stayed for a week. Good food, good sex, and Dean had nowhere else to go. Deacon liked to play vinyls on an old record player while they fucked. Dean went out and bought him a copy of “Houses of the Holy,” just because he didn’t have one and that seemed like a damn shame.

The day after Dean gave him the record, Deacon said, “You probably oughta head out. I’m sure your old man is wondering where you got off to.” Dean took it for the dismissal it was. Get too familiar, then get gone.

The next time they met, Deacon punched Dean in the face — presumably to help keep their covers as a snarky prisoner and jackass warden. Dean thought he maybe put a little too much _ump_ into it.

“Sorry,” Deacon whispered later, leading Dean back to his cell, “but I know you like it a little rough.”

 _Maybe I don’t,_ Dean thought, picturing an unopened record on the table next to the door as he walked out of Deacon’s apartment, head hanging low. _Maybe you don’t know me at all._

 

///

When Sam and Dean carry Cas’s body into the house, the mixtape falls out of his coat pocket. Dean almost steps on it. He stumbles at the sight of it, nearly dropping Cas’s feet.

“Dean?” Sam sounds strained, and his hands are pale where they’re crossed over Cas’s chest, his arms wound under Cas’s armpits to hold him up. Cas’s head lolls against Sam’s stomach, and Dean can’t stand the sight of his lifeless face so he keeps looking at the ground.

“I’ve got him,” Dean rasps, and he feels like he wants to die. _One step at a time. Just get him inside._ “I’ve got him.”

When they leave to look for Jack, Dean picks up the tape and shoves it in his jacket pocket. Sam sees, but he doesn’t say anything. Dean wipes at his red eyes and tries to focus.

They have work to do — and Dean is gonna find this thing and kill it himself.

 

///

  _I don't care what the neighbors say_  
_I'm gonna love you each and every day_

The first time Dean saw Cas and thought _I love you_ , they were in Purgatory.

He probably loved Cas before he saw him kneeling on the riverbank, face streaked with muddy water and cheeks covered in scruff. But something about that moment and the naked joy and relief he felt in it let loose the words he never allowed to fully form before — _I love you, I love you._ He didn’t tell Cas that, though. He said, “I need you” instead and hoped it would do.

Dean thought Cas might figure it out — everyone else did. Benny sure seemed to know Dean was in love right off the bat. Naomi sure as hell knew, with her pointed comments about Dean hoping Cas would return to him. Crowley made his jokes; Sam looked between the two of them with that softness in his eyes. Claire made Dean promise to take care of Cas; Lucifer mocked his failure to do so. They all got it. Dean never had to say _I love Cas_ to them, not that he ever would. He couldn’t even say it to Cas.

And he had a lot of opportunities to say _I love you_ in the years since Purgatory. In the crypt. At the Gas-N-Sip. When they got Cas back from Lucifer. When Cas said it, dying in a barn. Yet Dean never said it back. There are no words with the power to hobble him quite like those three — you say them and you’re vulnerable, lying on your back with all your soft parts exposed, ready to be ripped into with the inevitable _please leave_ that seems to follow them every time.

Better to keep Cas and keep him at a distance than to openly love Cas and lose him.

The mixtape was born out of a moment of weakness. One day Cas confessed to forgetting most of Metatron’s pop culture dump with a hint of sadness in his voice, and the next day Dean was listening to every Led Zeppelin tape he owned and working out the perfect playlist to say _I am secretly in love with you and also want you to have good taste in music._

And then Cas tried to give it back.

_I love you. Please leave._

 

_///_

When Cas comes back to him, Dean almost tells him then and there. It’s the perfect spot, the perfect timing for the two of them — in a dark alley with the Impala and an eavesdropping Sam behind them, one of them freshly risen from the dead.

Instead Dean says, “Welcome home, pal,” and buries Cas in a hug so he won’t have to see the slight disappointment in his eyes.

 _Pal._ What a stupid fucking thing to say.

 

///

In the end, it doesn’t happen in any monumental way. There is no tear-soaked confession, no bloody kiss, no raging fight with those three words thrown in as a white flag.

They’re driving in the Impala one day, no current world-ending matters to attend to. They’re on a literal milk run. Dean is, as always, listening to Led Zeppelin and humming along, windows rolled down and one hand hanging outside to feel the breeze. They’re alone, and Cas has that placid look he gets when he’s enjoying himself — just the faintest hint of a smile, sitting there in the passenger seat with his hair ruffled by the wind and his tie a little loose around his neck.

He shocks Dean by humming a few bars of “Good Times Bad Times.”

“You know this song?” Dean asks, glancing between the road and Cas.

“Of course.” Cas reaches over to turn the music down, and because Dean is in love, he lets him. “You put it on my mixtape.”

Until this point, Dean assumed Cas never listened to the tape. Even after it fell out of Cas’s coat pocket he told himself it didn’t mean anything. Where else would Cas put it? He didn’t really own anything he couldn’t carry in that stupid trench coat.

“You listened to it.” Dean’s mind skips like a broken record. “You—”

"I loved it,” Cas says earnestly, small smile growing slightly wider. Fonder. “I heard you in every verse.”

Dean focuses on the center line so hard it starts to blur as he says, “That’s what I was going for.”

He feels Cas’s full attention on him, cataloguing every breath, every blink. “Is there anything else you were going for?” The question is calm but curious.

_I loved it. I love you._

“I love you,” Dean says, and his heart plummets to his stomach. He said it. There is no taking it back. There’s also no escape route if Cas doesn’t say it, too. He should have at least pulled over first, should have thought more—

“I love you.” Dean looks at Cas, and his small smile is huge now, gummy and wide. Dean’s never seen anything like it. He didn’t even know Cas knew how to work that particular muscle group. Dean’s going to throw up. He’s going to cry. He is definitely smiling back and completely ignoring the road. “Dean, pull over.”

Dean whips onto the shoulder, parking the car off the roadway and turning the hazards on. He stares at Cas, and Cas stares back. It doesn’t matter who moves first, only that they meet in the middle.

When they finally come up for air after making out on the side of the road like horny teenagers, Dean says, “Thank fuck for Zepp, man.”

 _You can feel the beat within my heart_ _  
_ _Realize, sweet babe, we ain't ever gonna part_


End file.
